ABSTRACT
This is how in the early twelfth century the recently rebuilt church of San Marcowas described by a monk at the Venetian monastery of San Nicolò di Lido. His statement provides the clearest contemporary evidence for a direct relationship between the Justinianic church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and a medieval structure. Modern scholarship has linked the late antique Apostoleion to various churches in Apulia, on Cyprus, and as far west as Aquitaine. In addition, direct links between these medieval monuments, which share the common defining feature of a nave covered by a sequence of domes, have also been postulated. It is these links that the present brief study proposes to investigate in order to establish their nature and to challenge some long-held assumptions. Although not central to medieval architectural history, the issue is of considerable importance because it enables us to explore contacts between Constantinople and regions both within and outside the empire, and to assess the impact of Byzantine architecture beyond the empire’s frontiers.
